The Chesapeake is the largest estuary, the largest bay on the eastern coast of the United States. Its shoreline is 4600 miles long, more than enough to stretch across our country.

It produces more oysters than any other body of water in the world. In fact, the Maryland portion alone can claim this distinction, year after year. It also produces more Atlantic blue crabs, by far, than any other place in the nation. It is the prime habitat of the rockfish or striped bass, and a very important feeding ground for a host of other fish.

The Chesapeake and the adjoining marshes and backbays of the Atlantic coast are the central trunk of the Atlantic waterfowl flyway; that is to say, migrating waterfowl come down in the autumn from all across the top of this continent to converge precisely at the latitudes of Chesapeake Bay. This means that if you go to the right places at the right times, you can see waterfowl migrations of a volume and variety not to be found elsewhere in the U.S.